


All My Life I Never Really Knew Me Til Today

by Ladytalon



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Beginnings, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fic, Reunions, Survivor Guilt, improper use of fireworks, unfortunate remodeling tactics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7441297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladytalon/pseuds/Ladytalon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...because every happy ending needs to have a start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All My Life I Never Really Knew Me Til Today

**Author's Note:**

> Before they weathered [The Perfect Storm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7078651) and took [Five Minutes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7393186) for themselves. Lore checked over by [foxie-camie](http://foxy-camie.tumblr.com/), who also requested that I write this. Since little to no information can be found regarding the length of Mei's cryostasis, I've set it as 28 years and slapped an AU tag so nobody gets their thong in a wad. The thought of Soldier: 76 as a grumpy human vacuum is one that will keep my heart warm throughout the coldest winter. He also probably sings in the shower. Also, hot damn! This is my 300th recorded instance of having a severely overactive imagination...pretend there's confetti, or something.

Mei isn’t sure where she belongs now. Her parents have been dead for ten years and her former friends are now older than she is – it unsettles them to see her, wrapped in the appearance of her 31 year-old self, whenever she comes by so she’s stopped visiting completely. They can’t hope to understand that it doesn’t matter that she’s technically a senior citizen; she simply feels like _herself_. The same Mei-Ling who had entered the cryogenics chamber is the one who had walked out of it. 

Except…not really.

She doesn’t feel any older, but she feels plenty of other things. Guilt. Anger. Sorrow. They’d been so _close_ to figuring out a way to make the world’s climate troubles a thing of the past, only to have lost the entirety of their research. All of it, _wasted_. 

Mei slips into a hooded sweatshirt and pulls on her boots, determined to tire herself out so that she simply has no energy to wonder where they’d gone so wrong. A long walk is just what she needs, Mei tells herself firmly. She pauses in front of the mirror to fix her hair so that she doesn’t have to worry about it falling in her face, and carefully adjusts the hair stick her mother had gifted her with when Mei had been selected to lead the team at Watchpoint: Antartica. Her parents had been so proud of her, and greatly impressed that she would be escorted by the famed strike team of Overwatch. Strike Commander Morrison himself had stopped to shake their hands and tell them what an important task their daughter was undertaking. She hopes they hadn’t died knowing how badly she’d failed. 

She walks onto the Daci’en Temple grounds first, stepping to one side as a tour group goes past and points curiously at everything. It doesn’t look as though visitors are allowed inside many of the gardens anymore, as they had been during the aftermath of the Omnic Crisis, so Mei keeps going until Dayan Pagoda is fading in the background and her legs begin to hurt. 

Nighttime in Xi’an is a lot brighter than she remembers – everything is limned with neon light so that if she didn’t know any better, Mei would think the outlined shapes had no substance to them at all. Advertisements clutter up whatever space is available and she stops to take a look at a section of wall particularly thick with posters; in some cases, the papers have been adhered at least four deep. Her eyes slide from one to another, until she picks out something that was posted by local law enforcement…a mysterious vigilante known only as Soldier: 76 has been seen in various parts of the city and is wanted in connection with several raids of Overwatch facilities. Mei gazes at the poster, which features a slightly blurred photo of the man in question, before losing interest and directing her attention towards an advertisement for a new cineplex. Maybe that’s what she needs to take her mind off of reality and refresh her sense of optimism – she hasn’t been to a movie in ages. 

Well, obviously. Mei allows herself a faint smile at this witticism. She takes a bullet train to the site of the theater, a sprawling complex filled with people, and spends time browsing through the offerings in an attempt to find something she might like to watch. Mei winds up spending too much time looking and not enough on decision-making, because when she settles on a movie it’s too late to purchase a ticket for it and she’s not willing to wait around for another two hours.

Mei is more than ready to return to her place, a tiny little box that hardly deserves the title of apartment, when the first shots ring out. At first she simply assumes that the flat popping sounds are fireworks but as the sounds get closer, Mei finally realizes what they really are…and that they’re getting progressively louder. She’s frozen in indecision – which way should she run? How can she be _sure_ she won’t run directly into the conflict? – and by the time she ducks into an alley it’s already too late. 

Again.

She’s nearly knocked down by a dark shape barreling out of a side street who stops just long enough to catch her wrist, keeping her from falling. “Thank you,” Mei says reflexively. 

Her rescuer just grunts irritably and releases her. “Go _home_.”

Mei has a split second to realize that he’s been injured before the sound of the man’s pursuers make her aware that they’ll be discovered at any moment…and that they’re in a blind alley. He swears beneath his breath. “You must hide now,” she says urgently, casting about for a place to hide. “I will distract them. Could you get up there?” Mei gestures overhead, to where a canopy is attached to the bricks – it’s the back entrance to some sort of club and the only feasible place for the man to hide; the only other place is inside a row of trash barrels that are too small for him to fit inside.

The man’s visor gleams a dull red in the half-light as he looks at her silently, and then he explodes into action by kicking off from one of the barrels and scaling the alley wall like some sort of creature she’s only seen in movies. Or _would_ have seen, if she’d only decided earlier. Mei whirls as the group chasing him runs into their shared alley and she’s vaguely surprised to see that it’s not the police, at all. These men and women are all dressed in black with their faces covered, and she swallows hard as they walk up to her; she’ll have to talk fast. “Oh, thank goodness,” Mei blurts out before their leader can speak. “There…there was a man, and I thought that he would _kill_ me! He was on the posters, I saw posters with his face-! Please tell me that you caught him,” she rambles, letting her nervousness lead her. “I was almost murdered and I called the police right away; you came so _quickly_.”

Mei isn’t sure her gambit will work, but she can’t think of anything else to distract them from the man - Soldier: 76? Wasn’t that who the poster said he was? – currently hanging right above her head. An injured man, whose muscles might not be up to the task of keeping him braced against the wall. The urge to look up and check is almost overwhelming. “That’s right, we’ve been tracking his movements,” one of the men tells her, not bothering to disabuse Mei of her ‘belief’ that they’re law enforcement officials. “Where is your phone?”

“I, um…what? My what?” Mei stammers.

“Your phone,” the man repeats impatiently. “If you called-”

“Oh, my _phone_! I thought you said my home and I was wondering why you would ask that because why would that be important because obviously I am not at my home right now since I am _here_ so-” Mei breaks off and lifts her hand to point towards the side street. “He took it from my hands and ran that way.”

“ _Go_ ,” the man snarls to his associates, who take off in the indicated direction. “If you are lying to me, woman…”

Mei forces herself to stand her ground as he comes closer to her. _Please do not fall on top of me,_ she says silently to the man hanging above her head. “If you find him and he still has my phone, could someone return it to me please? It has the only contact information I have for my aunt,” Mei babbles on hysterically, not having to feign a tremble in her voice. “All of my information is there – please find it.”

The man is plainly irritated at having to stay to talk with her. “Your name?”

“Zhou Mei-Ling,” she says, bobbing in a small bow. “Oh, _thank_ you, sir!”

He leaves, and Mei stays frozen in place in case he doubles back. She steals a glance above her head to find Soldier: 76 still there, though it looks like he’s having a difficult time holding on. His injury has soaked the side of his jacket with blood and, as Mei looks, a drop slowly separates from the cloth to fall directly upon the right lens of her glasses.

“Can you stay up there a little while longer? They could come back,” Mei explains, as if he wouldn’t already know this. “I’m sorry; I know you’re not feeling well.” Soldier: 76 acknowledges her words with a slight nod, and she murmurs that she will make sure they’re gone – there certainly doesn’t seem to be anyone waiting to catch her in a lie as she peers around in the mouth of the alleyway. She shouldn’t have given her real name, but she didn’t know what else to do; she’s not very used to subterfuge. Mei motions to him urgently and hears him drop down to the pavement behind her with a grunt. “Follow me, please!”

She leads him down several streets before picking one at random and unzipping her sweatshirt. “What are you doing.”

Mei smiles and removes it, holding it out to him. “Put this on, and I will take you to my place to rest.”

He hesitates only briefly before accepting it, but refuses to remove his visor when she recommends that he do so. “Why are you helping me?” This time his question actually sounds like a question, and Mei takes it as a good sign. She smiles at him again, pulling her pants legs from inside her boots and shaking her hair out of its customary bun. Her hair stick is carefully tucked away, and she wipes away the spot of blood on her glasses. They won’t fool anyone from up close, but from far away neither of them should look like anyone those thugs encountered in an alley.

“Why didn’t you just let me fall down?” Mei asks instead. “Put your hood up, please.”

Soldier: 76 looks at her for a moment, and then slowly does as he’s told. “You don’t have to do this,” he says roughly. “You should just go home.”

“I _am_ going to go home. You are coming with me,” she says, stepping forward to help support his weight by putting her arm around his waist. Mei guides him out into the street where she knows that she can hire some sort of transport – there are Omnic kiosks all around the city that she’d never really thought she would ever take advantage of, but there’s no time like the present to try something different. Her new friend makes her laugh by suggesting that he’s much too heavy for someone of her stature to keep upright. “I am stronger than I look, Mister Soldier. Or should I call you Mister Seventy-Six?”

He grunts again. “I’m just a soldier. Who I am hasn’t mattered in a long time.” He staggers slightly, and Mei plants her legs and hangs on to make sure he doesn’t fall over and take her down with him.

“Well, it matters to me,” Mei says, trying to conceal her worry. She can feel his blood, wet against the palm of her hand where it’s already begun to soak through the fabric of her sweatshirt, and is thankful that she chose to wear the dark grey one. 

They cross the street, and Mei leads him up to one of the kiosks where he ducks his head while she negotiates with the Omnic on duty for passage in the old-fashioned rickshaw. When she glances back at 76, Mei sees that he’s removed the visor but has tugged the hood forward so that it shadows his features. She makes sure to tell the Omnic how tired her friend is, just in case the gang from earlier decide to come asking questions, and eases her arm back around him as soon as they’re settled in the back of the rickshaw. “Thanks,” 76 says gruffly. 

“Let’s get you home and in bed,” Mei answers louder than she really has to, for the benefit of their paid audience. “Would you mind going a bit quicker, please?”

The city turns into a blur around them that neither is interested in watching, because he slumps against her without warning and Mei’s terrified that he might be dying. She doesn’t think that she can stand yet another death on her conscience.

She manages to get him into her apartment somehow, past one of her neighbors who thinks that it’s his business to stand there and cluck his tongue disapprovingly while making comments about what he thinks of young women who bring drunk men back to their homes. 76 is barely conscious and trying to help support his own weight as much as he can, but the blood loss is taking a heavy toll – pun intended. “Oh my _gosh_ , you’re heavy!” He slurs an apology as they stagger to her bed and he crashes down atop the mattress. Mei unzips the sweatshirt, easing it from his shoulders before working on opening his blood soaked jacket and peeling the black undershirt up off of the wound.

He loses consciousness several times as she carefully rinses the blood off until she can actually see where the injury is located and how bad it really is. There doesn’t seem to be a bullet still lodged inside, and it’s obvious that an energy weapon didn't do this type of damage, so Mei carefully rolls him onto his side and checks for an exit wound just to be sure. She finds it surprisingly close by, which means that 76 had only been grazed – Mei hopes she never sees the result of anyone being hit full-on by whatever it was. She’s not sure how he could have survived just the near-miss.

Mei makes several trips to and from the bathroom, bringing clean water and a rapidly dwindling supply of clean towels. If the bleeding isn’t stopped soon, she’ll either have to call the police after all or start applying makeshift compresses out of her underwear. The mental imagery makes her smile despite the seriousness of her current situation.

She folds one of the smaller towels and presses it against the wound to staunch the bleeding…which is finally, _finally_ beginning to slow. His breathing grows less ragged, and Mei pushes her hair out of her face with her forearm as she sits down next to the bed and looks at him. Now that the visor has been removed and the hood isn’t over his face, she can see that her rescue project is a surprisingly handsome man despite the white hair. There’s something about him that Mei can’t quite put her finger on, though, because she could swear that she’s seen him before. This doesn’t make any kind of sense, but she _knows_ this man somehow.

Mei frowns at him, wondering how this can possibly be. She’d certainly remember anyone, male or female, with scars like the ones that slant across Soldier: 76’s face. It’ll come to her, she thinks with a weary sigh. Mei gets to her feet and gathers up the soiled towels, intending to shove them into the sink and let them soak overnight, when she glances back at the man in her bed to find him looking right at her. “Oh…! You’re – oh,” Mei says in surprise, nearly dropping her armful onto the floor. “Um, don’t…don’t move, I will be right back!” She hurries to toss the towels into the bathroom and comes back to find 76 attempting to push himself up to a seated position. “I told you, do not move!”

“I’m afraid I’m not a very good patient,” he tells her in that deep voice of his. Mei knows for certain that she’s heard that voice before, because the sound of it sets her skin awash in goosebumps…and those _eyes_.

“I know you,” Mei blurts. “I do not know how, but I _know_ you.” She stares at him in fascination before she realizes that she should be worrying about how he can possibly be up and moving. “Let me check your bandage.”

76 is staring right back at her. He’s probably surprised at being ordered around by a woman half his height, she thinks self-consciously. “I should get-”

“Sit _down_ ,” Mei snaps, jabbing her finger towards the bed as he starts to get up. His ass stays hovering just above the mattress as he freezes instantly at her tone, and part of her files this information away to laugh about later. “I am not allowing you to get up and run wild, possibly getting yourself killed, when I could have done something to stop it,” she says a bit more calmly. "I am sorry, but you are staying here."

He sits back down and allows her to check his wound, which is beginning to bleed again. “Where’s my - _nnngh_ \- jacket?” 76 asks her, touching his side gingerly.

“You are not leaving,” Mei repeats.

The scars on his face ripple slightly as his expression changes. “No, I – there’s…a biotic field generator inside it. A healing device.”

“ _Oh_.” She could have used it earlier, if only she’d known it was there. Mei retrieves the ripped, dirty mess from where it’s been shoved half underneath the bed and hands it to him. 76 makes another soft grunt as he fumbles with the jacket, sighing when she reaches out to help. “Is this it?” she asks, holding up a small cylindrical object.

He takes it from her and drops it directly on the floor, where the impact causes it to open up. "Yes."

The room is bathed in a warm, golden glow and Mei lifts up her hand to look at it when she feels a tingling sensation in her fingers. “Oh, wow! That’s so _nice_.” The skin she’s been gnawing at around her nails is healing right before her eyes. “Wow,” Mei says again, then blushes as she realizes that she should move. “I’m sorry, you need this so much more than I do!”

The corners of his eyes crinkle slightly from the smile he’s holding back from showing her. “It’s okay; I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be shared.” His deep voice sends another thrill through her. “So do you usually bring strange men home with you?”

“That is quite a question,” she says thoughtfully, and could swear that he looks embarrassed. A big, tough military man like this…actually _blushing_. No, that can’t be right.

“ _Oh_. No, I didn’t – I’m sorry, _no_ , I just-”

Apparently it _is_ right.

And it is adorable.

Mei clears her throat. “I am not sure if you are dangerous like the posters say, and I am not sure if I want to know…but I don’t like bullies. There was one of you, I counted seven of them, and that isn’t fair at all. How do you feel?”

76 hazards a glance at her after touching his side. “Better. Thanks.”

“Will this bionic field heal everything, or do you still need to visit a hospital? A lot has changed since I left the Watchpoint,” she admits.

His head jerks up. “Watchpoint. Which one.” The harshness is back in his voice for some reason and Mei wonders at it, watching the look on his face when she tells him what he wants to know. “I…heard…about a team going there. Overwatch lost contact with that base soon after it was established.”

Mei swallows past the lump in her throat, unwilling to explain what had happened. She relives it often enough in her dreams; she isn’t going to reopen the wound to a perfect stranger. “Yes, they did…is it supposed to do that? The bionic field,” Mei explains when he stares at her in confusion.

“Biotic.”

“What is?”

“No, I’m…it’s a biotic field, not a _bionic_ one.” 76 carefully pats at his side again. “It shuts itself off to conserve power, but I can deploy it again in a minute or so after it recharges.”

“Oh.” Mei looks down at her knees, hoping he doesn’t ask any more questions about the Watchpoint. “Would you like to have a shower? I am not saying you smell, because you do not, but it might help you feel bet-” she’s cut off by a loud growling noise, and her patient is back to looking embarrassed because it seems as if near-death experiences make him extremely hungry. “I can also get food.”

He coughs and rubs at the back of his neck. “You don’t have to-”

“I didn’t have anything to eat, either.” Mei smiles and shows him her tiny bathroom, which looks even smaller with someone his size inside it, handing over her very last clean towel with a reminder about her water allowance for the day. He’s probably more used to the water rationing than she is.

She searches through her clothing until she finds an old shirt that might be large enough for him to wear, nearly taking it back when she realizes that it had been a souvenir from her team’s preliminary visit to Antartica when they’d been setting up the Watchpoint. The last time she’d worn it had been the day before Strike Commander Morrison had escorted them…Mei pauses at the reminder that even John Morrison hadn’t survived any more than her team had. She still remembers how handsome he’d been, solemn but always unfailingly polite whenever she’d talked to him – that hadn’t been very often, because of how nervous he’d made her. Once he’d even _smiled_ at her after she’d fumbled his rank. “ _Call me Jack_.”

Mei shakes her head in dismay, realizing that Jack Morrison’s ‘voice’ in her head has somehow been replaced by that of her mysterious Soldier…who is currently completely nude, and wet, in her apartment’s bathroom. 

Not that she cares at all.

She contacts the nearest takeaway restaurant and arranges for food to be delivered, then calls back and doubles the order after further deliberation. If he eats it all she won’t mind but if he doesn’t, Mei will have enough for several meals. She cleans up the worst of the mess on and around her bed, listening to the rattle of the pipes as 76 turns off the water. Now that she has nothing else to do but wait, Mei can start to appreciate how stupid it had been to shelter a wanted man. She has nothing to go on but her instincts, which had told her to help him in the first place just because she hadn’t liked the odds he’d been facing. 76 could be anyone.

Mei calls out to him when she hears the bathroom door open. “There is a shirt for you to wear.” He thanks her after a short silence, and she turns just as he’s pulling the borrowed shirt on. Mei tells herself sternly that she’s only looking at the wound in his side and if her eyes wander a bit…well, she needs to visit the optometrist soon anyway. She can blame an unnamed vision disorder for making her ogle. “Who were those people chasing you?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard the name ‘Talon’ before.” He plucks ineffectually at the fabric stretched across his chest, and moves towards her to help fix the bedclothes. “I hope I don’t damage your shirt; it’s a little small.”

“That’s okay. I do not wear it anymore…too many bad memories,” Mei says. “And yes, I have heard of Talon. You must be someone important to have their attention.”

“Just lucky, I guess.” 76 takes the sheet from her hands and smooths it out in a practiced motion, folding it beneath the thin mattress. She watches him make her bed, wondering if he’s ex-Overwatch. There are a lot of displaced operatives around the world and it would be just her luck to have one land almost directly into her lap. When Mei asks about it, 76 pauses yet again before answering. “It was a long time ago,” he admits.

Mei’s struck anew by that sense of familiarity, and she’s about to ask him about it when the door chimes. “That must be our food.” She’s moving towards the door as it explodes inward, and then 76 is there in a startling blur of movement to push her back. 

“Window,” he orders, bringing up a forearm to block the first blow. Mei snatches up the first object she sees, which turns out to be a dinner plate, and throws it at one of the men from the alley. “ _Go!_ ”

She doesn’t want to leave him fighting them on his own, but she also doesn’t want to die…maybe if she gets the window open, he can break free long enough to follow her. Mei winces as her small kitchen table becomes one of the first casualties of war and turns to run to the window. It’s been painted shut, naturally, and she forgets her manners long enough to swear at it furiously. She darts back into the fray and snatches up a slab of the table – 76 has grabbed one of the legs and is delivering a beating to the three closest Talon agents – before running to throw it against the window. It bounces back off the glass and Mei nearly screams in frustration before her problem is solved by one of the thugs shooting a hole right through the window. She quickly knocks out the rest of the glass, unsure if the loud pounding noise she’s hearing is her nosy neighbor or her own heartbeat. 

The fight is intensifying behind her as she climbs out on the ledge. “Come on! Let’s go!”

76 is distracted long enough for one of his attackers to slam a gun butt into his face, making him stagger backwards. More of the agents force themselves into Mei’s apartment and she can hear the wail of police sirens beginning much, much too far away to be of any help to them. “Get out,” he shouts at her.

Mei’s hands curl into fists. She can’t just _leave_ him! Inspiration strikes when she twists around to look down, catching a glimpse of the neighbor’s balcony just below hers – the man’s son is constantly setting off fireworks late at night and blaming someone for them. If he’s left any of them out on the balcony, and if Mei can climb down to reach them…she takes a deep breath and throws a leg over the railing.

She climbs down as quickly as she can, dropping down into the lower balcony and finding that are indeed several of the more illegal varieties hidden beneath a tarpaulin. Mei snatches up three of them and shoves them in the back of her pants, silently thanking the boy for keeping a cigarette lighter close by as she borrows that as well. Her neighbor flings the window open and subjects her to a stream of profanity while she starts climbing back up. “Sorry,” she calls.

The fight has become markedly uneven – again – as Mei gets back up to her own balcony. It looks as though the Talon operative who’d fired the gun has decided to not risk hitting her own friends, but there are knives out and 76 has obviously been struck more than once. It’s a good thing she’s decided to never wear that shirt again, Mei thinks inanely. She yanks the fireworks out of her pants and fumbles with the lighter, ducking a hurled table leg.

76 casts a exasperated look back over his shoulder at her for returning. “Go!”

“No,” Mei yells back, finally getting the lighter to produce a flame instead of sparks. The fuse flares as it ignites, and she closes her eyes after bracing it against the sill. “Duck!”

The explosion is deafening in the small apartment. Even with her eyes closed, Mei can see how bright it is; the apartment building’s owner will evict her for this, and she can’t blame him at all. She risks a look at the chaos and 76 scoops her up as easily as if she weighs no more than a child, leaping from the window after grabbing his jacket – there’s screaming and smoke everywhere. Someone’s on fire. She’s _definitely_ getting evicted.

Mei becomes intimately acquainted with Soldier: 76’s magnificent rear end by the time he finally stops and puts her down. He’d been running much too quickly for his speed to be normal and she seriously doubts that his legs are prosthetics, but _something_ has augmented his strength, speed, and reflexes. They’re in yet another alley and she watches him toss the biotic field onto the ground before rummaging in a dumpster, only to pull out a massive gun from the trash. He runs a hand over the weapon as if checking it for something, then looks over at her. “Was that a Catherine wheel, back there?”

She takes off her glasses and squints at him. “I have no idea; I still can’t see.” Mei puts the glasses back on just in time to see him smile – really _smile_ \- for the first time…and suddenly Mei knows exactly where she’s seen him before, twenty-eight years before. When Strike Commander Morrison had smiled at her and turned her insides to jelly, it had looked just like this. The smile fades and he looks back down at the rifle in his hands; she wonders why he’d hidden it here in the first place. “Jack.”

Jack Morrison responds to his name by looking up at her, and then sighing when he realizes what he’s just done. “I’m sorry about your towels.”

“I thought you were supposed to be dead,” Mei says lightly.

He rubs at the top scar ruefully. “I could say the same about-” Jack’s eyes widen. “Oh no, I didn’t mean…shit. _Sorry_.”

“There is a lot of that going around, I think,” she says, trying not to think about it. Mei shifts the conversation towards safer ground. “Why did you throw your gun in the trash?”

Jack rolls his shoulders back in a stretch, eyeing her carefully. “One of them tagged it with something earlier – some kind of tracking device. I needed to stash it and circle back so I could remove it. You didn’t ask how I knew it was you.”

“No, I didn’t.” Mei smiles and doesn’t say anything more, watching the corners of his mouth twitch. 

He coughs, shifting his feet restlessly. "We lost track of a few installations, but I never thought…we should've checked on you."

"Nothing about it is your fault." They look at each other for a minute or two, and then Mei's stomach is the one that makes a loud complaint at the lack of food. The delivery person is probably wondering why Mei's apartment is on fire… "What about going somewhere to eat?” Mei shivers, suddenly aware how cold it is, and he immediately slides his jacket from his shoulders and offers it to her. “Oh, I can’t accept that.”

“Take it. Miss Zhou-”

“Mei.”

“Mei,” Jack concedes. “It might be best for you to stay with a friend tonight – it’s not safe for you to return home.”

“I’m going back after I have something to eat,” Mei says calmly, slipping the battered jacket on; the blood stains have mostly been rinsed out, so he must have taken it into the shower with him. The sleeves swallow up her hands and she can zip it up only so far – Jack Morrison might have some of the most impressive pectoral muscles she’s ever seen in her life, but there’s no contest over whose are actually larger. “I told you that I do not like bullies.”

“I don’t remember you being this stubborn.”

“Much can change in thirty years.” She watches him drop his eyes uncomfortably. “Would you like to eat with me?” Mei offers again. He hesitates only briefly before nodding and deactivating the biotic field, dropping the small device into a pocket. Jack makes no move to do anything with the massive pulse rifle, however, so she’s forced to speak up again. “It might not be a good idea for you to bring that with us.”

Another smile threatens to lift the corners of his mouth. “I know that, but I’m not going to leave it here in case they recorded its last coordinates.”

Well, of course she knew that.

He leaves it to her to pick a restaurant and stashes the rifle in a safe place before they go inside. Browsing the menu and conferring on their choices only takes up so much time until their server leaves them alone together, so Mei takes a deep breath and asks him how much of his wanted poster holds the truth. After all - what small talk is there left to make when you’ve been attacked by a gang of terrorists together and set off fireworks inside an apartment the size of a sardine tin? “There are a few things not listed,” Jack tells her, “and there’s even more that I still have to do, so I wouldn’t worry too much about what they _did_ write down.”

“Well, at least they took a nice picture of you,” Mei says as their food arrives. 

She takes a moment to marvel at how many plates are set down in front of him. Jack looks up from his appraisal of the dish closest to him. “There is that,” he agrees. “Which one should I try first?”

Mei picks one at random and begins to eat, trying not to notice the way he watches her use the chopsticks before attempting it himself…and failing miserably. “You could use a fork; there’s one right there.”

“If you’re not going to use one, then neither will I,” Jack insists, so she reaches across to arrange the chopsticks in his fingers. “It looks like you’re saving my life even when it’s not in danger.”

“I am not doing a very good job of it here,” Mei says, watching him snap one of the chopsticks and sigh. She sets her own aside and reaches for a fork. “We can have another lesson after you are not so hungry anymore; how is that?”

He grins ruefully. “Deal.”

Jack proceeds to eat at an astonishing pace, even for someone his size – it’s most likely due to whatever enhancements had been made to him before he gained the Overwatch command. She’s gratified that Jack eats neatly despite the rate at which the food is disappearing and doesn’t cram too much in his mouth at once, despite the fact that he’s obviously starving. Mei watches him practically inhale everything but the plate itself, working steadily through the dishes until he’s piled them five deep. A few members of the kitchen staff have peeked out to see for themselves that there’s really a strange American eating everything in sight. When he’s down to the last plate of food and Mei is still halfway through her main course, Jack suddenly sighs and sits back. “Wow,” is all she can say. “It looks like you were really hungry.”

“Metabolism issues.” His eyes flick over to her own meal. “What did you get, again?”

Mei tries not to laugh. “Would you like to try it?”

“Oh. No, I was just…wondering.” Jack picks up his fork and spears a piece of broccoli with it. “I still think you should stay at a hotel tonight.”

“I can’t do that,” she says firmly. “It is the only home I have, and I am not abandoning it.”

Those blue, blue eyes fix on hers. “I’m not suggesting you abandon anything. You’ve been through a lot tonight; are you really sure you’re ready to face a police inquiry on top of that?”

Mei drops her gaze to her plate. “It is the only home I have,” she repeats, unwilling to confess that she can’t afford to spend the night anywhere but in the apartment she’s already struggling to pay for.

“Overwatch used to have a standing reservation program running in most major cities; most of the host hotels were paid at the first of every month in case any of our agents needed a place to stay,” Jack says, guessing at what Mei doesn’t want to admit. “After all you’ve been through, I’d say Overwatch owes you a night or two.”

“I don’t know.”

Jack reaches across the table to withdraw two more packs of chopsticks from the condiment carrier, handing her one of them. “Think about it,” he suggests. “Now, didn’t you say you’d show me how to use these? I’m going to check on my rifle and then I’ll be right back for my lesson.”

He leaves, and Mei sighs inwardly as she slowly finishes her dinner because she has no illusions about the possibility of his return. One of the waiters cautiously ask her if she’d like him to clear away the used plates and she nods, feeling drained. The day’s absurdity is such that no one else could ever believe that the things she’s witnessed could ever actually take place…she’s going to have to think up a believable story for the police. 

She’s not surprised when he doesn’t come back, but it causes a tiny sliver of hurt to burrow into her heart just the same. Mei’s offer of payment is refused and she’s told that the man with her had already paid the bill, plus a generous gratuity, so all that’s left is to make her way back to her apartment where the members of Talon know where to find her. 

Another surprise awaits her when she returns home to find that not only are no police officers waiting to question her, but that Jack Morrison has somehow managed to repair the majority of the damage his presence had caused. There’s a new door hung on the hinges, and the inside of the apartment reeks of wet paint. Mei turns a slow circle to inspect everything he’d apparently worked at top speed to fix while she’d felt sorry for herself for being abandoned at a restaurant. There are several bulging trash bags resting against the window, and she peeks inside one of them to find that a majority of her scorched belongings had been packed inside…but he’d left the bags, for fear of disposing of something that has sentimental value to her.

Mei discovers that she’s smiling down at the bags and despite feeling foolish for saying ‘thank you’ to thin air, she says it anyway in the hopes that he can hear her from wherever he is. He could have easily left her to pick up the mess by herself and, while some might say that he’d only done what anyone would have, something tells Mei that it’s more than that. Whatever had driven Strike Commander Morrison to disguise himself behind that visor, she hopes that he knows that who he is really _does_ matter.

He is much more than _just_ a soldier.

**Author's Note:**

> [Pagemistress](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pagemistress1/pseuds/Pagemistress1) was the one who planted the idea of Jack being Mei's escort (not _that_ kind of escort but just you wait oh ho ho) into my head, so all credit for that plot point goes to her :)


End file.
